Jamie Foxx 'in the running' to play Frank Sinatra - Telegraph Celebrity news Jamie Foxx 'in the running' to play Frank Sinatra Jamie Foxx, the African-American actor, singer and comedian, has been named as a potential contender for the role of Frank Sinatra in Martin Scorcese's biopic of the entertainer. Foxx won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles Photo: AP 4:24AM BST 18 May 2009 Foxx, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 film Ray, reportedly considered to be "perfect" for the role. If he is chosen for the part, it will be one of the most prominent examples of "colour-blind" casting in Hollywood history. Also in the running are George Clooney, Leonardo di Caprio, Harry Connick Jnr and Justin Timberlake. But an unnamed source told the Daily Express: "Cool is colour-blind. Jamie would seem to be born to the role." "Magnificent singing voice, totally convincing acting ability, like Frank himself, born the wrong side of the tracks, rags to riches, makes it big against the odds, has his brushes with authority.

The guy's a gift." Foxx, 41, rose to prominence in 1999 in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday. He also boasts has a string of hit albums. He was adopted as a baby by his grandparents and raised a strict Baptist in a racially-segregated Texan community. Sinatra, who was raised in New Jersey by Italian immigrants, also shot to fame despite a hard upbringing during the Great Depression. Scorcese finally won the rights to make the film of Sinatra's life after years of negotiations with his family. Sinatra died in 1998 aged 82. Oscar winner Jamie Foxx rescues driver from burning vehicle | Film | The Guardian Jamie Foxx Oscar winner Jamie Foxx rescues driver from burning vehicle Actor and off-duty paramedic pull man from his crashed car seconds before it is said to have been engulfed in flames Wednesday 20 January 2016 08.53 EST Last modified on Friday 11 November 2016 07.21 EST Close This article is 1 year old The actor Jamie Foxx has become a real-life action hero – pulling a man from a burning car moments before it was engulfed in flames.

Foxx and an off-duty paramedic pulled the man from the vehicle moments after it crashed near the star’s home in southern California. The California highway patrol said the car came off the road in Ventura County and went into a ditch, rolling over multiple times and catching fire while the driver, 32-year-old Brett Kyle, was trapped inside. Foxx said he heard the crash from his house, called 911, and ran to the scene. He said the off-duty paramedic, who was driving by at the time, used large scissors to break the window, cut the man’s seatbelt and pull him out. Foxx said the truck went up in flames seconds after the rescue. The actor, who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles in 2004’s Ray, said he told the man: “You’ve got to help me get you out, because I don’t want to have to leave you. You’ve got angels around you.” Jamie Foxx embraces the father of a man he saved from a burning car. “I don’t look at it as heroic,” Foxx told reporters after meeting Kyle’s father, Brad, following the rescue. “I just look at it like, you know, you just had to do something.

And it all just worked out.” Brad Kyle said he had been shown surveillance video of the crash scene, showing several cars passing by without helping. “I just kept watching it and going, ‘My god, my god, he didn’t have to do a thing,’” Kyle said, breaking into tears as he spoke. “I think we all hope that we can do something when the time is there. But the question is, do we act or do we fear for our own life? He did not.” Brett Kyle sustained broken bones and a punctured lung in the accident, but he is expected to survive. The highway patrol could not confirm Foxx’s involvement but said two witnesses helped extricate the driver, giving similar details to Foxx’s account. His role in the rescue was first reported by celebrity website TMZ . The name of the paramedic who stopped and helped was not immediately available.

2004 Academy Awards® Winners and History Shrek 2 (2004) Actor: JAMIE FOXX in "Ray," Don Cheadle in "Hotel Rwanda," Johnny Depp in "Finding Neverland," Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Aviator," Clint Eastwood in "Million Dollar Baby" Actress: HILARY SWANK in "Million Dollar Baby," Annette Bening in "Being Julia," Catalina Sandino Moreno in "Maria Full of Grace," Imelda Staunton in "Vera Drake," Kate Winslet in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" Supporting Actor: MORGAN FREEMAN in "Million Dollar Baby," Alan Alda in "The Aviator," Thomas Haden Church in "Sideways," Jamie Foxx in "Collateral," Clive Owen in "Closer" Supporting Actress: CATE BLANCHETT in "The Aviator," Laura Linney in "Kinsey," Virginia Madsen in "Sideways," Sophie Okonedo in "Hotel Rwanda," Natalie Portman in "Closer" Director: CLINT EASTWOOD for "Million Dollar Baby," Taylor Hackford for "Ray," Mike Leigh for "Vera Drake,"

 Alexander Payne for "Sideways," Martin Scorsese for "The Aviator" This year's Best Picture nominees had tearjerker themes, including obsessive-compulsive mental disorder, euthanasia, heroin addiction, and other similar downbeat themes.

Three of the Best Picture nominees were biopics and based on real people: The Aviator (an epic about reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes), Finding Neverland (a whimsical tale about the creation of Peter Pan by Scottish playwright James M. Barrie), and Ray (a biography of blind musician Ray Charles). The other two were intimate character studies: Million Dollar Baby (a tearjerking drama about an ex-boxer who reluctantly trains a waitress (Hilary Swank) to become a professional boxer), and Sideways (a light, ensemble comedy, quirky romance, and character study about the adventures of two middle-aged, emotionally-constricted buddies in California's wine country for a week of wine-tasting).

The final tally of nominations and wins for each Best Picture nominee came down to an almost-even split in Oscar wins for Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator, with the former taking the top honors, although The Aviator had more total Oscars: Million Dollar Baby (with 7 nominations, with three of the nominations going to director/producer/star Eastwood, resulting in 4 wins including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor) - the two performance wins marked the second year in a row that an Eastwood picture won two of the four acting Oscars (Tim Robbins and Sean Penn won acting awards for Mystic River (2003)) - in six of the last ten years, the Best Picture winners had a central character who died at the end The Aviator (with 11 nominations and 5 wins, including Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, and Best Cinematography) - this marked only the third time in 21 years that the film with the most nominations did not win Best Picture Ray (with 6 nominations and two wins for Best Actor and Best Sound Mixing) Finding Neverland (with 7 nominations and only one win for Best Original Score) Sideways (with 5 nominations

 and only one win for Best Adapted Screenplay - for director Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, from a book by first-time novelist Rex Pickett) Unlike recent years 2003, 1997, and 1996, no one film dominated the categories (as did The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) , Titanic (1997), and The English Patient (1996)), with the nominations more or less evenly spread out, and no clear favorites or front-runners among most of the nominations.

According to box-office figures (of combined attendance) for this year compared to the last 20 years, this group of Best Picture nominees had an extremely low turn-out for viewing. By the time of the ceremony, none of the nominees were at blockbuster status (earning the benchmark figure of $100 million). Box-office results for the five top nominees were about 60% (or about 40% below) of the total gross for the Best Picture nominees in the last ten years. Most of the top nominees this year - all considered too risky and unprofitable by the giant Hollywood studios - resorted to using outside funding and non-studio financing, but were ultimately able to sign with the big studios: Million Dollar Baby - funded by Lakeshore Entertainment's Tom Rosenberg, then Warner Bros.

Finding Neverland - followed the conventional studio development process, Miramax Sideways - promised budget cuts made the film attractive for Fox Searchlight The Aviator - funded by producer Graham King, then Miramax (co-produced with Warner Bros.) Ray - funded by real estate and media baron Phil Anschutz, then Universal To assure profits, Hollywood proved that it was more willing to fund sequels, remakes, comic-book related films, and recycled TV shows instead of smaller-scaled, more intimate dramas that were among this year's top picks. Typical Hollywood films -- feel-good, big-budget blockbusters -- were not well represented within the nominees. Big money-making hits, including Mel Gibson's most talked-about The Passion of the Christ (with three minor nominations and no wins), Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, the low-brow comedy Meet the Fockers, DreamWorks/PDI's animated Shrek 2 (with two nominations and no wins), and Spider-Man 2 (with three nominations and a sole win for Best Visual Effects) were mostly ignored by the Academy. The group of five directorial nominees set up a strong match-up between Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood.

Mike Leigh's nomination replaced Marc Forster for the Best Picture-nominated Finding Neverland. The Best Director winner was 74 year-old Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby. [This was Eastwood's third directorial nomination and second Best Director win; he had previously won for his western Unforgiven (1992) , and was also nominated for the previous year's Mystic River (2003). Eastwood has now directed three Best Picture nominees and won two of them. Eastwood's other career nominations were for his leading roles in Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby.] Eastwood's win made him the oldest person ever to win and receive a directing Oscar, at age 74 and 272 days.

The other Best Director nominees were: Taylor Hackford (first-time nominee) for Ray [Hackford had won an Oscar with his previous sole career nomination for his live-action short film Teenage Father (1978); he also edited and produced the award-winning Best Documentary Feature Film, When We Were Kings (1996), with Oscars presented to the film's director and executive producer] Alexander Payne (first-time nominee) for Sideways [His sole previous, unsuccessful nomination was for his screenplay adaptation of Election (1999).] Payne was a double-nominee and Oscar-winner this year - he was also nominated (and won) for his adapted screenplay for Sideways Martin Scorsese for The Aviator [The longtime overlooked and beloved director has yet to win an Academy Award. He had been nominated four other times as Best Director for Raging Bull (1980) , The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), GoodFellas (1990) , and Gangs of New York (2002) (a shut-out with ten nominations). He became one of only five directors in history to have earned five nominations in the category without a win.

The other four were Robert Altman, Clarence Brown, Alfred Hitchcock, and King Vidor. Scorsese also has two other nominations, for his screenplays for GoodFellas (1990) and The Age of Innocence (1993). This defeat was the third time that Martin Scorsese lost the top directorial honor to an actor-turned-filmmaker - this also happened to him in 1980 (he lost to Robert Redford for Ordinary People) and in 1990 (he lost to Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves).] Mike Leigh for Vera Drake (with three nominations and no wins, including director Leigh's screenplay also), about a British woman who was arrested and put on trial for performing illegal abortions. [Leigh was previously nominated twice for writing and directing Secrets & Lies (1996), and for his screenplay for Topsy Turvy (1999).] Nine of the 20 acting/performance nominations (almost half) were real-life portrayals. In this year's group of 20 nominees, Hilary Swank was the only nominee in any acting category who had ever won an Oscar.

Eleven of the twenty acting nominations (or ten out of the 19 acting nominees if Foxx wasn't counted twice) were for first-timers. Four (or five, since Foxx was nominated twice) of the 20 acting nominees in 2004 were African-American nominees, besting the record of three nominated blacks that occurred in three different years: in 2001 (the year that both Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won Oscars), in 1985 when three were nominated for The Color Purple (1985), and in 1972 when Diana Ross was nominated for Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield were nominated for Sounder (1972). The Best Actor nominations were dominated (4/5) by actors playing real-life figures - all of the nominees had a single prior nomination - except for Don Cheadle. The category's favored pick was the ultimate winner, 37 year-old Jamie Foxx (with his second nomination in a supporting category also) as legendary blues singer and pianist Ray Charles in Ray.

[Jamie Foxx also set a record for being the first black to debut as a nominee in two categories in the same year, lead and supporting, for Ray (2004) and Collateral (2004). He also became only the second actor in Oscar history to receive Oscar nominations for two different performances in the same year - the first was Al Pacino in 1992]. His win made him the third African-American actor to win the Best Actor Oscar in Academy history. The other Best Actor nominees were: 40 year-old Don Cheadle (with his first career nomination) for his performance as Paul Rusesabagina, a heroic Hutu hotel manager who saves the lives of over 1,000 Tutsi and Hutu Rwandan refugees from ethnic cleansing/genocide in 1994 in the politically-volatile Hotel Rwanda (with three nominations and no wins) [The film drew comparisons to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) in its subject matter and theme.] 41 year-old Johnny Depp (with his second career nomination) for his role as Sir James Matthew Barrie, playwright and author of the children's classic Peter Pan in Finding Neverland.

[He was nominated in the previous year in a lead role for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) .] 30 year-old Leonardo DiCaprio (with his second career nomination) for his portrayal of twenty years in the life of eccentric, reclusive and iconoclastic billionaire and aviation legend Howard Hughes in The Aviator. [He was previously nominated in a supporting role eleven years earlier in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).] 74 year-old Clint Eastwood (with his second career acting nomination) as Frankie Dunn, a grizzled boxing trainer/ex-boxer who reluctantly trains and coaches a young waitress to be a professional boxer in Million Dollar Baby. [He was previously nominated as a lead in Unforgiven (1992) .] Considerable attention was paid to the fact that 46 year-old American Beauty (1999) nominee Annette Bening was again competing -- and lost a second time to 30 year-old Hilary Swank, who won as an underdog the last time around in their Best Actress match-up for Boys Don't Cry (1999).

Hilary Swank (with her second career nomination and second win) won the Oscar for her role as headstrong Maggie Fitzgerald, a working-class waitress who aspires to be a professional women's boxer in Million Dollar Baby. Swank was only the fourth actress to win two Oscars for Best Actress by the age of 30 (the previous two were Luise Rainer (at age 28) and Jodie Foster (at age 29)) - Bette Davis also scored her second trophy at age 30 when she won Best Actress for Jezebel (1938) . The other Best Actress nominees were a mix of first-time nominees and veteran-nominees: 46 year-old Annette Bening (with her third acting nomination, and her second lead, having been nominated for a supporting role in The Grifters (1990) and a lead role in American Beauty (1999)) as Julia Lambert, an actress-diva in 1930's London theater (based upon W.

Somerset Maugham's 1937 novel Theatre) who falls for a younger man in Being Julia (the film's sole nomination) 23 year-old Colombian-born actress Catalina Sandino Moreno (with her first career nomination) as Maria, a desperate, pregnant 17-year-old Colombian girl who agrees to transport heroin (in the shape of 62 latex-covered pellets) within her stomach to finance her unborn child's future in director Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace (the film's sole nomination) - this film was lauded at Sundance 49 year-old British character actress Imelda Staunton (with her first career nomination) as title character Vera Drake, a cheerful, saintly, hard-working cleaning lady, housewife and mother in postwar 1950s England who is put on trial for secretly performing illegal abortions in Vera Drake 29 year-old Kate Winslet (with her fourth nomination, twice in a supporting role for Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Iris (2001), and once in the lead for Titanic (1997)) as manic, hair-colored lover Clementine Kruczynski, a quirky woman who has her memories of her ex-boy

friend erased from her mind - and meets him again - in the original science-fiction comedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (with two nominations and one win for Best Original Screenplay) -- Winslet's fourth nomination set a record - it was the most Oscar nominations any actor had received before the age of 30!

The Best Supporting Actor winner was 67 year-old Morgan Freeman (with his fourth nomination and first win) for his role as Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris - a weathered, worldly-wise ex-boxer and manager of the Hit Pit Gym (and film's narrator), who supports a young scrappy waitress' goal to be a professional boxer in Million Dollar Baby. [He was twice previously nominated in a lead role for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) , and once in a supporting role for Street Smart (1987).] His win, paired with Foxx's for Ray, made it only the second time blacks won two of the four acting prizes [the first time was in 2001 with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. It was the first time that African-American actors won in both of their respective acting categories in the same year.] His win made him the fourth African-American actor to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Academy history. Two footnotes: This was the second (consecutive) year in which the stars of The Shawshank Redemption (1994) have won Best Supporting Actor.

Also, this was the second time in as many times that the Best Supporting Actor nominee from a Best Picture-winning Eastwood film won (Gene Hackman won for Unforgiven (1992) .

The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were all first-time nominees: 69 year-old former sitcom star (of M*A*S*H) Alan Alda as manipulated Senator Ralph Owen Brewster who battles Howard Hughes in The Aviator 43 year-old former sitcom star (of Wings, and Ned and Stacey) Thomas Haden Church as Jack, an emotionally-blocked, sexually-hungry, bridegroom-to-be and failed actor who uses a trip to the California wine country to express his commitment-phobia and experience a final fling before getting married in Sideways 37 year-old Jamie Foxx as Max, a veteran LA cab driver who is forcefully taken hostage (by psychotic assassin Tom Cruise) and coerced into becoming the accomplice and driver for the contract killer in Michael Mann's tense thriller Collateral (with two nominations and no wins) 40 year-old Clive Owen as Larry, a vengeful, sexually-betrayed doctor married to a beautiful yet unfaithful photographer (Julia Roberts) in the sexual-themed drama Closer (with two nominations and no wins) The Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner was 35 year-old Australian actress Cate Blanchett (with her second nomination and first Oscar win), as legendary,

 four-time Oscar winning actress Katharine Hepburn who has an affair with billionaire Howard Hughes in The Aviator.

[She was previously nominated for her lead role in Elizabeth (1998)]. This marked the first time a performer won an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winning actress. A small footnote: Blanchett's win marked the first Scorsese-directed performance to win in this category after seven losses (from Diane Ladd's nomination for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) to Winona Ryder's nomination for The Age of Innocence (1993)).

The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were: 43 year-old Virginia Madsen (with her first nomination) as Maya, a deceived, divorced, wine-loving, sad-eyed waitress who falls in love with depressed wine-soaked afficionado and wannabe novelist Miles (Paul Giamatti) in Sideways 36 year-old Sophie Okonedo (with her first nomination) as Tatiana, the supportive, unflinching and empathetic wife of crusading hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda 23 year-old Natalie Portman (in her first adult role and with her first nomination) as Alice, a bold, young American stripper in London in Closer 40 year-old Laura Linney (with her second career nomination, previously nominated for her lead role in You Can Count on Me (2000)), as Clara "Mac" McMillian, the sexually-awakened wife of sexually-confused and controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey (the film's sole nominee) Three big-budget, top-grossing powerhouse CGI-animated films, among the biggest blockbusters of the year, were nominated for Best Animated Feature.

This was the first time no traditionally cel-animated films were nominated since 2001. The winner in the category was Pixar/Disney's The Incredibles (with 4 nominations and two wins - also for Sound Editing), about a crimson-suited family with superheroic powers. The other nominees were: DreamWorks/PDI's Shark Tale (its sole nomination), a hip, urban underwater retelling of Jack the Giant Killer DreamWorks/PDI's Shrek 2 (with 2 nominations and no wins), the sequel to the 2001 winner, and the highest grossing animated film of all-time The Best Documentary Feature once again opened itself to intense criticism by leaving empty-handed the highest-grossing documentary film of all-time, Michael Moore's controversial, emotionally gut-wrenching and politically-biased Fahrenheit 9/11, partially due to Moore's insistence on competing for Best Picture rather than Best Documentary Feature Film, and partially due to his controversial acceptance speech for Bowling For Columbine (2002). Moore's film had won the top prize, Palme D'Or, at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2004, making it the first US documentary to win the award.

It was also the first non-fiction film to take the festival's top award since The Silent World (1956, Fr.), co-directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle. [Interestingly, Morgan Spurlock's similar-toned attack on mega-giant corporation McDonalds and fast-food expose Super Size Me was nominated.] The winner in the Documentary Feature category was Born Into Brothels about Calcutta's red-light district brothels and the children of the concubines. [In keeping with the theme of children, the Best Short Subject Documentary went to Mighty Times: The Children's March, about the 1963 children's march on Birmingham to protest segregation.] 80-year old director Sidney Lumet was given an Honorary Academy Award. Throughout his career, he received four Oscar nominations for directing (for 12 Angry Men (1957) , Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) , and The Verdict (1982)), and a fifth for writing the adapted screenplay for Prince of the City (1981), but never won the top prize.

He also directed Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), Fail-Safe (1964), The Pawnbroker (1964), Serpico (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Equus (1977), and Running on Empty (1988). Oscar Snubs and Omissions: Three high-profile directors were overlooked: Mike Nichols, Michael Moore and Mel Gibson. Aside from the stunning exclusion of Fahrenheit 9/11 from Best Documentary Feature, there were other films surprisingly overlooked. Mel Gibson's controversial, gory interpretation of Jesus Christ's crucifixion The Passion of the Christ (with three nominations - and no wins - for Original Score, Cinematography and Makeup) was overlooked for Best Picture, Best Director (Gibson) and Best Actor (James Caviezel as Jesus). Dogville, Lars von Triers' epic 177-minute modern day film noir was completely overlooked.

So were Best Director nominations for: Mike Nichols for his drama Closer (with only two supporting performance nominations), writer/director Bill Condon for Kinsey, Terry George for Hotel Rwanda, Marc Forster for Finding Neverland, Michel Gondry for the unconventional Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which should have been a Best Picture nominee), and Michael Mann for Collateral. Films that were passed over for Best Picture included: Closer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hotel Rwanda, Kinsey, Maria Full of Grace, Collateral, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, and Vera Drake. Zhang Jimou's dazzling martial arts film House of Flying Daggers (with one losing nomination for Cinematography) was puzzlingly overlooked for Best Foreign Film, much less Best Picture. Also, there was only a handful of minor nominations for these foreign-language entries: The Motorcycle Diaries (with an Oscar win for Best Original Song, Jorge Drexler's "Al Otro Lado Del Río", the first Spanish-language song ever nominated in Oscar history) and A Very Long Engagement (with two nominations).

The biggest foreign language omission was Pedro Almodóvar's powerful, NC-17 rated Bad Education (compared to Citizen Kane (1941) by Roger Ebert and to Vertigo (1958) by many others). It was completely overlooked for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (Almodóvar), and Best Actor for leads Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez. The biggest acting omission among the nominees was Liam Neeson's brilliant performance as Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey (with one nomination), the controversial and anguished sex researcher, as well as Peter Sarsgaard as Clyde Martin - one of Kinsey's test subjects and sleepy-eyed homosexual sex partners. Kevin Kline was also overlooked as closeted homosexual songwriter/singer Cole Porter, as well as Ashley Judd as his wife Linda in the musical biopic De-Lovely (with no nominations). Likewise, Kevin Spacey was kept out of the competition for his role as pop singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea.

Paul Giamatti, who was overlooked as Harvey Pekar in the previous year for American Splendor (2003), was snubbed for his lead role as failed and unfulfilled novelist, English teacher, snobbish wine connoisseur ("If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving') and sad-sack vacationer Miles Raymond in Sideways, as was Javier Bardem for his transformation into quadriplegic right-to-die advocate Ramon Sampedro in The Sea Inside (the Best Foreign Language Film winner, another film based on a real-life person!), and Peter Sarsgaard for his role as stoned gravedigger Mark in Garden State. Jim Carrey was unnominated for two films: Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, as Winslet's love-sick ex-boyfriend Joel Barish who mutually erase their memories of their relationship, and for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (with four nominations and a sole win for Best Makeup), as, among other bit parts, the devilish Count Olaf. Not surprisingly, last year's Best Actor winner Sean Penn was not nominated for his work in The Assassination of Richard Nixon, and Kevin Bacon for his strong performance in The Woodsman.

Four-time under-rated nominee Jeff Bridges was also bypassed for The Door in the Floor, as was Bruno Ganz for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the German historical drama Downfall (a 2005 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film). Perennial favorite (and 2000 winner) Julia Roberts was overlooked for her role as an alluring photographer in Closer, and Uma Thurman (as the Bride, an assassinatrix known as Beatrix Kiddo) and David Carradine (as Bill) were also bypassed for their work in Quentin Tarantino's epic revenge fantasy Kill Bill - Vol. 2. Talented young singer Emmy Rossum, a newcomer to films, was bypassed for her role as the Phantom's love Christine Daae in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (with three nominations and no wins). French-born actress Julie Delpy's role as Celine in Richard Linklater's sequel Before Sunset (with a single unsuccessful screenplay nomination) was also un-nominated.

Other omissions: Gena Rowland's performance as Alzheimer's victim Allie Calhoun in Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook, Cloris Leachman as half-drunk, sharp-tongued mother Evelyn in James L. Brooks' comedy Spanglish, Minnie Driver as narcissistic soprano Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera, and Meryl Streep as the vicious Eleanor Shaw in Jonathan Demme's updated remake The Manchurian Candidate. Although nominated in the Best Actress category, Kate Winslet was not nominated for her supporting role as severely-ill and widowed mother Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in the Best Picture-nominated Finding Neverland. Geoffrey Rush's amazingly uncanny portrayal of Peter Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was ineligible for nomination since it aired on cable channel HBO. It opted for Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe award eligibility as a television movie in the United States.

(The film had a theatrical release in the United Kingdom.) G�rard Jugnot was overlooked for his charming lead role as Cl�ment Mathieu, a simple music teacher who uses a chorus to help oppressed boarding school students, as was Fran�ois Berl�and as the abusive headmaster Rachin, in Christophe Barratier's The Chorus (with two nominations, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Song.) Trey Parker and Matt Stone's subversive and satirical comedy action/adventure film with super-hero puppets/marionettes - Team America: World Police, Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express (with three nominations) and the anime sequel Ghost in the Shell 2 were all overlooked for Best Animated Feature, which only had three of a possible five nominees. The phenomenally inventive Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, shot entirely against a blue screen with everything except the main characters computer-generated, was overlooked as a nominee for Best Visual Effects (the Oscar was won by Spider-Man 2 , and the other nominees were Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban andI, Robot).

Jamie Foxx: 'Django Unchained is supposed to make you angry' | Film | The Guardian Movies Jamie Foxx: 'Django Unchained is supposed to make you angry' The Oscar-winning actor and star of Quentin Tarantino's ultra-controversial new film about slavery talks about the n-word, Spike Lee and meeting George W Bush Jamie Foxx: 'You can't tell me that Quentin Tarantino can't do whatever he likes, ’cos damn straight he can.' Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/AP Thursday 17 January 2013 10.45 EST First published on Thursday 17 January 2013 10.45 EST Share on Messenger Close In the mid-1980s a teenage musician named Eric Bishop went to play piano for the rich white folk outside his hometown of Terrell, Texas. Bishop was driven to the house by a schoolfriend, who was then ordered to wait outside in the car until the recital was over. "I can't have two niggers in my house at the same time," the owner explained. If living well is the best revenge, then Eric Bishop provides a study in payback.

Recast in the role of Hollywood star Jamie Foxx, he has a Grammy for his music and an Oscar for his acting. By rights his latest movie should count as the icing on the cake, in that it's about a freed slave on a mission of reprisal. Except that the film's critics see things differently. Believe the nay-sayers, in fact, and you may conclude that Django Unchained is nothing more than another dubious commission, a fresh line in exploitation. Another performance for the benefit of wealthy white employers. Directed with gusto by Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained casts the actor as a black bounty hunter who kills white outlaws and gets paid for his trouble. The drama bounces from Texas to Mississippi on the cusp of the civil war, effects a shotgun wedding of 60s spaghetti western with 70s "slavesploitation" and douses the magnolia in arterial blood. It also kicks some hornets' nests along the way. In recent weeks Django has faced criticism for its use of racist language and its cavalier treatment of explosive material. Director Spike Lee claims the film is "disrespectful to my ancestors" and has refused to see the thing on principle.

"American slavery," he later tweeted, "was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western." Implicit in his comments is the sense that this is somehow not Tarantino's tale to tell. Foxx has his phone in his hand and his cap on his head, the peak twisted off-centre so that it points to two-o'clock. I'm barely through the door when he's returning fire, defending the film for all that he's worth. "The question for me is: where's Spike Lee coming from?" he says. "He didn't like Whoopi Goldberg, he doesn't like Tyler Perry , he doesn't like anybody, I think he's sort of run his course. I mean, I respect Spike, he's a fantastic director. But he gets a little shady when he's taking shots at his colleagues without looking at the work. To me, that's irresponsible." Besides, he adds, the history of entertainment is littered with white guys who told black stories, and white singers who sang black songs. Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's bad. "But you got to look at the individual cases. When Pat Boone covered Little Richard , you think, 'Huh?', he's got no affinity for it. Good Golly Miss Molly?

I don't think so. But you can't tell me that Eminem ain't hot 'cos he's white or that Elvis Presley isn't a bad motherfucker, or that Quentin Tarantino can't do whatever he likes, 'cos damn straight he can." The actor admits that OK, yes, he had to overcome some qualms of his own. But he was reassured by the director's reputation and by the presence of a peerless supporting cast. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, the sadistic plantation owner, smirking into the zoom lens. Samuel L Jackson is Stephen, the malevolent, all-seeing "house slave": the Uncle Tom to end them all. Both men can be viewed as nightmarish southern archetypes; unruly ghosts in the wings of American history. And yet Foxx has now made his peace with the basic thrust of Tarantino's assault. If there are elements to Django that make you angry, then so be it. "They're supposed to." Foxx was born in Texas in 1967 and was largely raised by his maternal grandmother, whom he credits as an inspiration.

In his teens he was a choirboy, a classical pianist and a football quarterback on the high-school team. In his 20s he worked as both a musician (he has since released four albums) and a standup comedian on the Los Angeles club scene. At the open-mic sessions he would mimic Ronald Reagan and Sammy Davis Jr. He told jokes about how Bill Clinton was really America's first black president and about how Mike Tyson was a little like an untrained pit-bull let loose in the sitting room. His big break came when he joined the cast of the TV sketch show In Living Color . Foxx explains that he changed his name to ensure better slots on the open-mic circuit, reasoning that female performers were usually called up first and that an androgynous tag might prove an advantage. The trick paid off and helped make him a star. In Living Color paved the way for film roles opposite Robin Williams, Will Smith and Al Pacino. He bagged an Oscar nomination for his turn as an imperilled cabbie in the Tom Cruise thriller Collateral and went on to win the best actor prize for his full-throttle impersonation of Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic by director Taylor Hackford.

Acting has been good to him, given that he appears to have fallen into it backwards. "Yeah well," he concedes, "it wasn't part of the plan. I was just doing my music and my standup and then In Living Color came about and all these other interesting acting jobs followed off the back of that. And I had to learn to respect it. At first I thought: 'OK, this is cool.' But then with Ray I had to take it seriously, I had to realise its significance. And I'm thankful that I did. Because if I had got on doing music back in 1990 or whenever, I'd probably be singing on a cruise ship now. 'Hey everybody! Remember this from 1989?'" Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray. Photograph: Nicola Goode/AP In the meantime, I'm tempted to view Foxx's life as a grand act of reinvention; a flight from his past, playing piano for racists in the state of his birth. But the actor is having none of it. Despite everything, he still cares for Texas.

"I mean, yeah, there are certain things people are gonna say about Texas, or say about the south, but it is what it is. I had a great upbringing and you learn how to get along, to do what you need to do as a young black man growing up in the south. You know, I performed at the new [Dallas] Cowboys Stadium a while back. There was T Boone Pickens , George W Bush, Jerry Jones . And meeting those guys as just regular people outside of politics, you realise they're great people. They're just like me and you." Can he be serious? I confess that I had Bush cast more in the role of the Calvin Candie-ish plantation owner, smirking from his veranda while the field hands do the work "Yeah," says Foxx. "But you don't know, because you don't know the man. There's a difference between the man and his politics. I'm not excusing anything George Bush did in his politics, but I rate people on how I meet them. That's not going to change me from being a Democrat to a Republican, but that's just the team they play for. Different values, different ways of doing things.

But that Texas camaraderie: there's nothing like it." Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained. Photograph: The Weinstein Company/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Foxx checks his phone and then shoots me a look. "You're knee-jerking," he says. "Same way people did with Django. They knee-jerked to slavery, they knee-jerked towards the n-word. But I come from the south and that's where the word grew. And I think that gave me an upper hand on the material. I know people like Stephen. I know people like Calvin Candie. I played cheese-and-wine parties for men who called us niggers. But my grandmother worked as a housemaid all her life and she taught me some truths. I learned those lessons and I learned them in the south, and I did a pretty good job of it too. So now, when I go back to Terrell, all the people come out. Smalltown boy done good." I wonder what his grandmother would have made of Django Unchained. No doubt the language alone would give her conniptions? "No, no, my grandmother used to cuss like a sailor.

'Nigger, you don't bring your little ass in here, I'm gonna whup it real good.' Django wouldn't bother her at all." On adopting his stage name, Foxx admits that it didn't feel real. It was a costume, a pose, a magic ticket to get him through the door. These days it feels like a much snugger fit. He was Eric Bishop in Texas and now he's Jamie Foxx in Hollywood and there are only a few people left who remember how it used to be. He thinks it over. "My sister never calls me Jamie Foxx," he says finally. "My sister detests Jamie Foxx. She says to me: 'You are Eric Bishop. Don't you come here with your Jamie Foxx shit.' And even with Django, she'll be happy when it all calms down, 'then you can go back to being just you'. That's refreshing, you know. She's never been swayed by the success or the lack of success." Back in the early days, half a lifetime ago, Foxx had a standup routine about the roles that we play. Everybody has to put on a show, he said. But for African Americans the bar is set still higher.

They have to perform like Oscar-winners, passing themselves as white to survive the working day. "Well yeah, that's right," he says. "As a black American, when you leave the house, you take on a role. At my house I'm extra black. Now that's too black for the office, so you got to tone it down. You get home and you're tired: 'Whoo, I had to be white for eight hours today.' Other guy says: 'That's nothing. I had to be white for 12 hours 'cos I had a dinner meeting.' So it's sort of a joke but there's truth to it too. In order to navigate, you have to pull it back a little. That's the lesson we learn." Maybe less so these days, though? The former Eric Bishop shrugs and smiles. "Not so much, maybe not so much. We're getting there," he says. "The world is evolving." Foxx on film Collateral (2004) After more than a decade in movies, Foxx surged to the front of the rank courtesy of his Oscar-nominated turn as a taxi driver held hostage by Tom Cruise's contract killer.

Michael Mann's direction makes the most of LA's empty urban spaces. Ray (2004) The late Ray Charles is conjured up in all his playful, lustful, anguished glory in this otherwise stolid, respectful biopic of the legendary musician. In his Oscar acceptance speech, Foxx paid tribute to his grandmother, who taught him how to be "a good southern gentleman". Miami Vice (2006) Foxx reunited with Mann for a lush big-screen treatment of the 80s TV show about two roguish cops patrolling the art-deco seafront. Quentin Tarantino would go on to cast Foxx alongside Don Johnson, best known as Crockett on the original TV series, in Django Unchained. Dreamgirls (2006) Foxx stars as sweet-talking Curtis Taylor, a thinly veiled Berry Gordy, who founds a record label and helps usher black soul singers before a mainstream white audience. Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar for her support slot as his tempestuous star turn.

The Soloist (2009) Foxx brought his classical training to bear on his role as Nathaniel Ayers, a real-life musical prodigy whose career is derailed by schizophrenia. The film flopped and the critics were unimpressed – although both Foxx and co-star Robert Downey Jr emerged with their dignity intact. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) For his next trick, Foxx will play power-crazed Electro, enemy all of that is good, in Marc Webb's big-budget comic-book sequel. The actor explains that his four-year-old daughter was alarmed on learning that Electro is the villain. "Damn," she said.

"That means Spider-Man gonna beat you up." Django Unchained is released on 18 January Ben Child: Former heavyweight champion says he and the actor are 'in discussion' about a proposed biopic, which would use the same CGI wizardry as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Published: 30 Jul 2014 Tarantino returns dizzily to form with a horribly funny slavery western – and Samuel L Jackson is extraordinary as the ultimate Uncle Tom Published: 18 Jan 2013 Quentin Tarantino first offered part played by Jamie Foxx to Smith, but actor felt the role played by Christoph Waltz was the real lead Published: 26 Mar 2013 Long-gestating film about civil rights leader aiming to hire Django Unchained actor and World Trade Center director Published: 11 Oct 2013

Question: Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for playing which man in a 2004 film?
Answer: RAY CHARLES